What do I do with this old laptop?

September 26, 2008 6:19 PM

I'm looking for suggestions for both scenarios: The computer works, or it doesn't work. I'm waiting for a battery from eBay... Wikipedia says it runs OS 7. What can you do with that? A friend suggested I gut it and fit it with a Nintendo or Sega or something. Anything to spark an idea, and possibly where to look for how-to's concerning your suggestion, please!!
posted by photomusic86 to computers & internet (3 answers total)

Ah, the Powerbook 3400. Great box, it will run all the way up to Mac OS 9.0.4. It was an unbelievably expensive, deluxe lappy in its day. I used mine as a Hotline/web/email server. Do you have an AC adapter for the unit? If so, any boot chimes, etc?
posted by porn in the woods at 6:25 PM on September 26, 2008

If it is not broken, Linux will run on the machine, it should be less work to run an emulator on it with the appropriate ROMs than it would be to gut it and stuff a nintendo or something in there. You will have a modern OS, that configured properly will perform better than mac OS 7 (ie. skip the gnome, kde, or even xfce desktop that ubuntu tries to force on you, slackintosh with fluxbox and rox filer would be a good starting point).

If it is broken, there are so many possible things you could do with it that I don't know where to start, and none of them would be particularly useful.
posted by idiopath at 8:29 PM on September 26, 2008

I found one of those and I wrote a Hypercard stack (program) which scrolled a never-ending stream of meaningless but important-looking messages on the screen. Then I put it into the server room at work with a stern "DON'T TOUCH" notice. It stayed for nearly two years before anyone asked what it did.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 9:12 PM on September 26, 2008 [1 favorite]